Monthly Archives: August 2010

While making supper tonight (Spanish rice, tuna and lettuce salad), there came a rapping at the door. Our neighbour. “Is Travis home?” he inquired. And I knew what was coming.

The small shed. What are our plans for it, he wanted to know. “I’m blogging about it! It’s my blog project!” I wanted to cry, but somehow bit my tongue.

You see, though the shed and its contents are ours, (four gaffs and 16 mismatched articles of footwear included), the shed itself straddles our land and the neighbours’. Which was never a problem as long as the neighbours were all family, but we being imports from Town and Away, all bets are off.

The neighbourly representative this evening was polite. He plans to tear down the rotting shed in his garden, and thought he might replace it with a more modern variety on the plot our small shed now occupies (albeit entirely on his property). He wanted to talk to Travis about our plans for the shed, but I quickly informed him I am the woodshed authority in these parts. (I have a blog about them, which makes me an Internet authority, and that’s good enough for me). (Also, Travis wasn’t home).

We know the shed rests partially on his land, but there really is no way we can do without the small shed this coming winter. The larger shed is practically in ruins, while the small shed has a straight beam and walls intact. We do have plans for the large shed – plans to repair or even replace the rotten walls and floor besides. But until that project gets underway, the small one is essential to the well-being of our woodpile. (And anyone who heats exclusively with wood in Newfoundland knows just how important your woodpile well-being is).

And so. The small shed remains standing for another day, and hopefully another winter. Hooray! But good fences make good neighbours, and I had better not get too attached to the small shed. I know its days are numbered.

It wasn’t a good way to start a weekend, either. I’ve been now eight days sans courriel regulaire. Cela m’en nerve. En tout cas, c’est pas la fin du monde. I’m armed with Travis’ laptop and a wal-mart CD of photos to share.

Let’s start with an interior shot:

Rafters shot 1, small shed

And another:

Rafters shot 2, small shed

See the rolls of tar paper? The broken lobster pot? The random bits of wire, frayed rope, rotten cloth and unidentified metal pieces? It’s going to be a fun tearing all that stuff down.

Sadly, I don’t have a ‘before’ shot of either whole shed interior, because I lacked the foresight to take one. (The same missing foresight that would have anticipated the nasty virus then fatal harddrive error that has sent my own laptop to the computer grave. Flowers and best wishes may be sent to theshedsproject@gmail.com).

In other shed-related news, I’m busy pretending I did not see a largish rodent skitter between the old bed frame and the woodpile last week. It’s not going so well. It was a lot easier to pretend rodents out of existence when I hadn’t, in fact, seen one in the shed.

We know they belong to us because when we bought the house, these two sheds (among a dozen or so within a stone’s throw from the front door) were painted using the same colour as the house. See?:

Matching dark green trim identifies ownership

For the first three months, we gave no thought to the sheds and their contents. We were focused on the interior property instead, tearing down walls, moving staircases and chimneys and jacking up corners. As renovations progressed, the sheds became repositories for doors off their hinges, extraneous drywall and idle tools. When we moved in in early April, we relied on the wood from those sheds to keep the stove burning, all while piling extra boxes, spare furniture and stuff wherever we could.

But now it’s reckoning time. Though it’s 25 degrees Centigrade today, winter is not far off. We have a couple of seasoned wood piles ready to be stowed. We’ve got to Deal with the sheds so we can get the wood out of the weather and call ourselves ready for winter.

The sheds have been around as long as the house, if not longer – if the house itself was any indication, the previous owners could respectfully be called packrats. I only hope to find a few treasures among the trash.